Currently, different types of compressors are used in cooling or refrigeration systems. For home applications, vane rotary compressors are commonly used thanks to their reduced size.
Typically, a vane rotary compressor comprises a circular rotor rotating inside of a larger circular cavity configured by the inner walls of the compressor housing. The centers of the rotor and of the cavity are offset, causing eccentricity. Vanes are arranged in the rotor and typically slide into and out of the rotor and are tensioned to seal on the inner walls of the cavity, in order to create vane chambers where the working fluid, typically a refrigerant gas, is compressed. During the suction part of the cycle, the refrigerant gas enters through an inlet port into a compression chamber where the volume is decreased by the eccentric motion of the rotor and the compressed fluid is then discharged through an outlet port.
While small sized vane rotary compressors are advantageous, leaking of refrigerant through the surfaces of the inner walls of the compressor housing is disadvantageous. This is why these compressors also use lubricating oil, having two main functions: one is to lubricate the moving parts, and the second one is to seal the clearances between the moving parts, which minimizes gas leakage that can adversely affect the efficiency of the compressor.
Known in the state of the art are small sized compressors of the rotary vane type such as the one described in EP 1831561 B1, where the losses of the refrigerant are countered by making very specific design and maintaining the dimensions of the parts of the compressor under extremely tight tolerances in order to still provide a good compressor performance while maintaining a miniature scale. The result is that small deviations in these tolerances would largely affect the efficiency of the compressor and, at the same time, the compressor so designed is very complex to manufacture and is very costly.
Document KR 101159455 discloses a rotary vane compressor where a shaft joined to a rotor rotates guided by a plurality of ball bearings: the problem of such a configuration is that these bearings respond as hard points allowing no flexibility in this rotation, thus preventing any adjustment or absorption of shocks by the system, which can be thus easily damaged in certain cases.
The present invention comes to solve the above-described problems of the state of the art, as it will be further explained. The invention also aims at other objects and particularly the solution of other problems as will appear in the rest of the present description.